181 posts from July 2017

July 31, 2017

Last week, Carlos Curbelo ventured across the Capitol to see his hero, Arizona Sen. John McCain, speak about the need for compromise in Congress.

The moderate from Miami listened intently as the maverick from Arizona. who was recently diagnosed with brain cancer, chided colleagues from both parties on the Senate floor about the dangers of naked partisanship.

“Just had the special privilege of being in the Senate Chamber to welcome John McCain back to D.C.,” Curbelo tweeted. “He's a national hero & one of my heroes.”

But less than 72 hours later, McCain cast the crucial vote against a narrowly tailored Obamacare repeal bill — a vote that will likely give headaches to moderate House Republicans like Curbelo ahead of the 2018 elections.

Curbelo and others like him took a politically tough House vote in May to replace Obamacare. But that bill is now dead. The political ads are yet to come.

In the wake of the legislative failure, Curbelo, whose Miami-to-Key West district is the most Democratic-leaning in the country currently held by a Republican, is now talking bipartisanship.

“It's critical to our democracy for Members of Congress to put politics aside and come together to find solutions to the issues affecting our constituents,” Curbelo, who declined an interview request, said in a statement. “Our healthcare system needs reform and I've been committed to working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to find market-based solutions that would result in increased coverage and lower costs.”

Curbelo is part of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of 43 House Republicans and Democrats who released a bipartisan health care plan on Monday.

Among other things, the plan calls for creating a stability fund that states can use to reduce health insurance premiums, requiring that businesses with more than 500 employees provide health insurance — instead of the current 50 employees — repealing the medical device tax and providing guidelines for states that want flexibility in the existing exchanges.

But hours before McCain’s vote, Curbelo said he was ready to proceed with the repeal of Obamacare if the Senate passed it.

Most Republican senators did not support the so-called “skinny repeal.” They viewed it as a way to start negotiations between House and Senate leaders to come up with a better plan.

Curbelo was unconvinced that any more negotiations among Republicans would work, and was ready to vote for a scaled-down repeal of Obamacare that pleased few within the GOP.

Though Curbelo doesn’t have any legislative victories to show for his Obamacare vote, the Republican Party is ready to support a potentially vulnerable incumbent who voted in favor of one of the party’s biggest priorities.

“For Curbelo’s part, he has always been consistent in his messaging for healthcare,” said National Republican Campaign Committee spokeswoman Maddie Anderson. “His vote in the House was a way to keep the debate and the conversation going forward. He was aware that he thought it needed work.”

Obamacare figures to be a huge campaign issue in 2018 for Curbelo and whoever challenges him for his seat, as 92,500 people in his district are enrolled in Obamacare, the second-highest figure for any congressional district in the country, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The South Florida Water Management District chose its deputy director as the agency’s new chief, replacing a combative insider close to the governor with a career environmental regulator who has spent more than a decade working on Everglades restoration.

Ernie Marks, who joined the district in March 2016, becomes the third director in three years.

Marks served as the South Florida regional director for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission for two years and before that oversaw ecosystem projects for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for a decade. He has a degree in environmental economics and natural resource management from the University of Rhode Island.

Marks was the only person nominated for the position during the board’s 31-minute meeting, largely spent praising the work of outgoing director, Pete Antonacci, the former general counsel for Gov. Rick Scott who earlier this month was named new chief of Enterprise Florida.

“Pete was the right guy at the right time,” said board chairman Dan O’Keefe. “My advice to Enterprise Florida: Brace yourselves and fasten your seat belts.”

During his two years at the helm, Antonacci repeatedly took on federal regulators and environmental groups. He accused the Everglades Foundation of cooking numbers on a study that looked at the need for a southern reservoir and threatened to end a longstanding partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to manage the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, incurring the wrath of longtime Everglades advocate Nathaniel Reed. Earlier this month, he ordered district scientists not to participate in the National Academies of Sciences’ annual review of Everglades Restoration in West Palm Beach this week. More here.

Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Grieco held a news conference Monday to confirm what many top backers already knew: He has abandoned his embattled bid for mayor.

“This year’s proven to be exceptionally challenging for me, my family and the community, forcing all of us to deal with distractions and political attacks that have no purpose but to cloud my service to the people of Miami Beach,” Grieco said.

He read a prepared statement flanked by his family and about 30 supporters in a public park around the corner from his South Beach home. The crowd cheered as he approached through a light rain.

Grieco will continue campaigning, however: He’s now running for a second term as commissioner.

Last week, Grieco began calling supporters to let them know he would drop out of a competitive mayoral race against former state Sen. Dan Gelber. Word spread quickly around the Beach over the weekend, with many wondering how this would impact an already-crowded race for his commission seat, in which four other candidates were also in the running.

Gov. Rick Scott's promise to fight for repeal of the Affordable Care Act has hit a roadblock after the Senate failed to pass any legislation to repeal the law or replace it.

In the early morning of July 28, Republicans failed to muster enough votes to repeal former President Barack Obama's signature legislation. Three Republicans sided with the Democrats, leading to the defeat of repeal: John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Scott, a Republican and former health care company president, vowed during his first campaign in 2010 to fight to repeal the federal law. We have been tracking his progress on our Scott-O-Meter, which tracks dozens of Scott's campaign promises.

A conservative watchdog group has filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics against U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her continued employment of IT aide Imran Awan after he was barred from the House computer system and under criminal investigation.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust filed a complaint Monday.

“There is something quite amiss as to why Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz continued to use taxpayer funds to employ former technology staff member, Imran Awan, even months after he was barred from accessing the House’s computer systems and a number of her colleagues severed ties with Awan,” said Matthew Whitaker, Executive Director of FACT. “Since Awan’s arrest last week, Wasserman Schultz has been evasive and unable to answer even basic questions about the nature of Awan’s employment with her office. This only further confirms the urgency of an investigation into her unethical and illegal actions.”

Wasserman Schultz's spokesman David Damron said in response to the complaint:

“Our office worked with the House Chief Administrative Officer to outline a position that allowed us to obtain, and our employee to provide, valuable services without access to the House network. Those services included consulting on a variety of office needs, such as on our website and printers, trouble-shooting, and other issues. In other words, the complaint that this right-wing group says it’s filing is entirely baseless. It’s no surprise that they would nonetheless file it, against one of Donald Trump’s fiercest critics, at a time when the Administration is trying to distract from its internal turmoil and destructive health care efforts.”

In a statement, the Weston Democrat said after Awan was fired: “After details of the investigation were reviewed with us, my office was provided no evidence to indicate that laws had been broken, which over time, raised troubling concerns about due process, fair treatment and potential ethnic and religious profiling. Upon learning of his arrest, he was terminated.”

"General Kelly is 1 for 1. Let's keep it going," Curbelo said in a succinct tweet.

Scaramucci's firing is the latest White House staffing shakeup in recent days. On Friday, former Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus was let go by Trump via Twitter and press secretary Sean Spicer announced his resignation after Scaramucci was hired 10 days ago.

The Trump administration will freeze assets, ban travel and forbid business transactions Monday for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of undermining democracy after he carried out an election Sunday for an all-powerful new legislative assembly in defiance of warnings from the U.S. and international community.

As part of what are expected to be a series of escalating sanctions, the Treasury Department will add Maduro to its growing list of sanctioned current and former members of the Venezuelan government and military. Administration officials began informing members of Congress of their plan early Monday afternoon.

The U.S. has yet to settle on steeper economic sanctions President Donald Trump threatened ahead of Sunday’s Venezuelan election for a new constituent assembly with the power to dissolve the opposition-held parliament, effectively wiping out the remnants of Venezuela’s democracy. On Sunday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called the vote a “sham election.”

The Trump administration has threatened to sanction all 545 constituent assembly members once they are seated. That would include Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, and powerful congressman Diosdado Cabello, as well lowly socialist party members with no foreign assets to speak of. The new assembly is supposed to take over in the next two days. It’s unclear what U.S. assets, if any, Maduro might hold.

The administration had been debating whether to make a big sanctions splash Monday or roll out the measures in sequence over the next couple of weeks.

The U.S. plans to refrain from deploying its harshest sanction — a ban on Venezuelan oil imports — though it had raised that possibility ahead of Sunday’s election. Instead, the Trump administration is considering Russian-type financial sanctions to limit U.S. companies from trading in sovereign debt on primary or secondary markets. The sanctions could even be retroactive, affecting Goldman Sachs’ widely criticized May purchase of $2.8 billion worth of bonds issued by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, according to a former U.S. official who is familiar with the discussions.

With Tropical Storm Emily bearing down on Florida's west-central coast, Gov. Rick Scott issued a state of emergency in 31 counties late Monday morning.

The affected counties include those in the Tampa Bay area, such as Hillsborough and Pinellas counties which are among those under a tropical storm warning. Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties are also covered by the emergency declaration, although they aren't forecast to be in the direct path of the storm. Read the declaration here.

"This state of emergency gives the state the flexibility to work with local governments to ensure they have the resources they may need," Scott wrote in one of a series of tweets just after 11 a.m. "[The Florida National Guard] stands ready to assist with any storm related impacts."

Scott's office said at 8 a.m. the governor was en route to Tallahassee to monitor the storm from the State Emergency Operations Center.

Scott's chief spokesman John Tupps initially told the Herald/Times Scott was out of the state and Tupps declined to specify his whereabouts. Tupps later said Scott and his wife, Ann, were on vacation in Maine.

"When he found out about the storm very early this morning, he was immediately engaged and he immediately decided to head back to the state," Tupps said.

Scott was scheduled to speak by phone at 11:15 a.m. with Bryan Koon, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

I’ve declared a state of emergency in 31 counties in response to Tropical Storm Emily: https://t.co/VmOREXmqoN (1/3)

Who will be the next director of the South Florida Water Management District?

The board convenes today in a conference call to announce a replacement to outgoing director Pete Antonacci,who was named by Gov. Rick Scott last week to head the embattled Enterprise Florida economic development agency, a lateral move for the governor's former general counsel and loyal supporter.

The replacement director may be an interim appointment or permanent -- potentially, only an 18-month job -- and the candidates include:

Ernie Marks, director of Everglades Policy and Coordination. He is considered the favorite of Antonacci, having moved to the district as recently as March 2016 from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission where he was South Florida regional director. He previously worked for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection as Director of the Office of Ecosystem Projects and as a regulatory manager.

Terrie Bates, water resources director for the district, is a three-decade veteran of the agency. She manages the WMD's scientific focus on ecosystem and technology research.

Jeff Kivett, former director of the districts's operations, engineering and construction, who left in 2016 and is now vice president of the Northern California area at Brown & Caldwell, a California engineering firm.

Drew Bartlett, deputy secretary at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, has been with the state since 2007 and before that spent 16 years with the EPA.

Once the new, or interim ED is in place, one question ahead is whether the new director will pivot the agency to reversing the decision by Antonacci to sever ties with the National Academies of Science. Antonacci apparently took the governor's office, and his political staff, by surprise when he announced to the governing board that he no longer wanted his staff to continue the relationship with the top scientists charged with reviewing the Everglades project.

The organization has a $358,000 annual contract with the SFWMD and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to review Everglades restoration progress and to produce a report every other year.

In a July 5 letter to Stephanie Johnson of the NAS, Antonacci referred to an agenda for the August 2017 Committee on Independent Scientific Review of Everglades Restoration Progress (CISRERP), criticizing it. "It is plain on the face of the proposed agenda that your panel of distinguished scientists are being lead (sic) down a path of unscientific meddling into the art of budgeting, management and operation by entities designated for such purpose," he wrote.

He complained that "top down Washington nitpicking" was adding "little to the goals of Everglades Restoration" and suggested, for example, that the "development of a Combined Operation Plan" in South Miami-Dade was not helpful to Everglades restoration.

He added that if the group continued to "put science on the back burner," the SFWMD "will have no choice but to legally withdraw from any financial commitments" and he suggested the agency could instead rely on the University of Florida Water Institute, which was hired by the Florida Senate to author a 2015 a report on Everglades restoration.

Among the issues on the draft agenda was an update on Senate Bill 10 which asked the question:

"Does the Senate Bill in essence direct the Corps and District to choose the more expensive but slightly more effective '2nd best option' presented in the CEPP...i.e. the 12' deep 21,000 ac reservoir with 7000 ac STA on the A1-A2 footpront (sic) (estimated to cost $2B more but provide 2-% greater benefits?)

Antonacci was harshly critical of the Senate proposal to build a water-storage reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee to offset the need for damaging water releases into nearby estuaries, arguing that buying land would postpone other needed improvements.

"It is well-recognized that more storage is needed system-wide, however, the myopic focus on land acquisition south of Lake Okeechobee does little to contribute to restoration success,'' he wrote in a letter to Miami-Dade commissioners.

In its latest report, the NAS noted that less than 18 percent of the $16 billion effort needed to complete the restoration project has been funded.

In his July letter, Antonacci suggested replacing the National Academies group with scientists from the University of Florida's Water Institute.

When Johnson responded in a letter, saying that "some information on budget and management is necessary for the Committee to understand the broader context for restoration progress and the relative impact of scientific issues," Antonacci was blunt.

He accused the group of "highly objectionable mission-creep" and suggested that the WMD staff "will not participate in your August meeting."

Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam is talking a lot about a "pathway" to an open carry gun law in Florida as he chases the Republican nomination for governor, and he proudly calls himself an "NRA sellout" on social media in response to media criticism of pushing a pro-gun agenda.

But his vocal support for an open carry law surprises people who have actually pushed for it in Tallahassee.

Two leading open carry supporters, Sen. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, and former Senate President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, can't recall Putnam ever helping them get the bill passed.

"Zero," Gaetz said of Putnam. "He didn't help and he didn't hurt. He played no role in moving the bill. He never called me or approached me about the bill or offered to help."

Gaetz's Senate Bill 300 in the 2016 session would have allowed nearly 2 million people with concealed wepaons licenses to openly carry firearms. At an October 2015 Senate hearing, the witnesses included the NRA, Florida Chamber of Commerce, League of Women Voters, Fraternal Order of Police and Bradford County Sheriff Gordon Smith. Putnam was silent. Around the same time, Gaetz and his son Matt, then a House member and now a congressman, held a press conference with Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey. Putnam wasn't there. "He issued no statement, not even a press release," Gaetz said. "He was not involved."

Putnam's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services processes concealed weapons license applications. He has been very aggressive about promoting that, including partnerships with county tax collectors who process the paperwork. Putnam's support for the Second Amendment has never been an issue, and he got A-plus ratings from the NRA when he was in Congress. The question is his support for an open carry law.

Steube filed open carry (SB 140) in the 2017 session, and the bill was seven words long. Steube has no recollection of Putnam trying to help pass the bill.

"This is the first I'm hearing of him taking a position on it," Steube told the Times/Herald. Citing Putnam's "pathway" comments, Steube said: "Prior to that, I didn't know what his position was."

Neither Steube not Gaetz is supporting a candidate for governor.

After a speech to the Argus Foundation in Sarasota in January, Putnam was asked by the Herald-Tribune'sZac Anderson about Steube's bill. He said: "I haven't had an opportunity to review Sen. Steube's bill." Three weeks later, Capitol reporters pressed Putnam on the issue at AP's annual session for journalists. His response: "I think it is important for us to have that debate but I think, generally speaking, there are places where you can expand where people carry guns in a safe and effective way."

In a Times/Herald interview, Putnam said: "I've always been a strong supporter of the Second Amendment ... There's no inconsistency at all." He said he recalled meeting with Gaetz a number of times in the 2016 session, "but they were typically on matters related to my legislative agenda and my budget. So I certainly made the best use of time on the issues that were on the top of my list."